Wednesday, 29 May 2013

Just a quick post from me today, I'm sharing a Clean and Simple (CAS) design on a card I made for a pal recently. He no longer lives in the UK, so I didn't want to add many layers or embellishments so that it would be flat to go through the postal system - and be a little cheaper to post too being lighter !

I used a C6 basecard, a stamp from a set by Stampin'Up! - it was a freebie during their recent Sale-abrations promotion - and this old phonebox image is one of my favourite from the set. I also love the Celebrate sentiment stamp. This set of stamps is perfect for creating those often hard to make men's cards and I'm so glad I managed to get it whilst it was still available.

Firstly I stamped the phonebox image on to a scrap of white cardstock using SU! Cherry Cobbler ink, then dragged the inkpad around the edges of the stamped layer to give just a hint of a border before attaching to the base card. Finally I stamped the sentiment using the CC ink.

Job Done and this card was despatched on it's journey to warm and sunny climes !

Thursday, 23 May 2013

Morning All, got any nice plans for today ? If not, why not hit your 'table of craftiness' and create an entry for the new challenge starting today over on the Cute Card Thursday Blog. This week our theme is 'Tie It Up' and our prize is sponsored by The Pretty Little Ribbon Shop.

Here's my DT card for the challenge

I've interpreted the theme by using some twine I found in my bag of ribbons n stuff, all three pastel shades are so pretty, but I have no idea where I bought it from !

The rest of the materials I used are mostly from Stampin' Up! - cardstock, ink stamps and a punch all of it from SU!. The cute little love image is from a set of stamps I recently bought, I got this set as I already have the matching punch, making the tiny images much easier to cut out.

Sentiment is from a set of stamps by Hero Arts and I stamped it using SU! Cherry Cobbler ink.

Nice and clean and simple for my design today, hope you like it - pink and red is one of my all time fav colour combos, what's yours ? Do tell !

Thanks for popping by to check out today's project, and don't forget to hop over to the CCT blog to see some of the awesome creations from the rest of the DT.

Tuesday, 21 May 2013

Morning Folks. Today's project is a New Home card I created to send to a lovely on-line crafting pal who finally moved into her new home after a long and stressful time spent waiting for all the necessary legal stuff to be completed. I'm sure she's now settling in nicely and I hear that she will actually have a dedicated craftroom, how fabulous !

Here's the card I created to send to her

To create the background I used one of my current fave ways to use Distress Inks. Applying the ink pad direct to the card and dragging, this creates a great effect which I love. I used Mustard Seed and Mown Lawn, over stamping the border onto the green area with Memento Tuxedo Black ink.

I've used stamps I recently acquired from The Artistic Stamper, I love these quirky little houses and the sentiment was just perfect. I love how the border stamp works well to create the impression of flowers in the garden. I used Copics to add a few touches of colour to the houses, cut out the stamped design and attached to the background using foam pads. After cutting around the sentiment layer, I dragged the Mown Lawn ink pad around the edges to soften them a little.

Hope you enjoyed your visit today, it's great to have your company for a few moments, let me know what you think of my creations, I love hearing how people feel about my work. Have a Great Day, whatever you have planned.

Monday, 20 May 2013

Happy Monday Folks, today is a lovely crafting pal's Birthday and I do hope the Purple Princess has a great day in store - Happy Birthday Matey !

Of course, I had to include some purple in the card I created for her so here it is

I know that Kathy loves the Clean and Simple (CAS) style of design and she is also very fond of the Paper Artsy JOFY stamps designed by Jo Firth-Young which both she and I acquired recently. I hope I've achieved a design that 'ticks all her boxes' with my card.

The background panel was created using Mustard Seed and Seedless Preserves Distress Inks, applied using a blending mat and Inkyliscious brushes, then layered over a slightly larger scrap of cardstock matching the colour of the ink. I then stamped the yummy JOFY image in the centre of the panel using black Memento ink before colouring the 'flowers' using Copics. The sentiment is from the Inkadinkado set I love (and have used a lot lately !) these words are amongst my fave, this was also stamped using Memento Black.

Thursday, 16 May 2013

Welcome to Thursday with Stamping Grandma. The theme for the new challenge starting on the Cute Card Thursday blog is 'Dancing Queen' and our prize this week is sponsored by Whimsy Stamps.

Here's my DT card for this week's challenge

It's been quite a while since I brought my Hanglar and StAnglar stamps out to play so I thought it was about time I featured one of them on a card. This little cutie is all dressed up and waiting in the garden for her handsome escort to whizz her off to dance the evening away at her Junior Prom.

The gazebo was cut using a Spellbinders die and the green floral flourish, fence and trailing ivy were cut using Marianne's dies. I coloured the image using my Copic pens before fussy cutting the image out. The bp's were free with a magazine recently.

Thanks for visiting to check today's project, I always like to encourage my visitors to pop over to the CCT blog to check all the fabulous creations from the rest of the DT.

Monday, 13 May 2013

I'm so loving my newly acquired Paper Artsy JOFY stamps designed by Jo Firth-Young, they're such fun images to create with. My lovely crafting pal Kathy (aka The Purple Princess) has set the monthly challenge for May over on the Craftbubble Craft Mad and Loving It Group and she's given us a fabby sketch to work with. This is the card I've entered for the challenge.

I used cardstock from Stampin'Up! the JOFY stamps and SU! Cherry Cobbler ink to create the design on the background layer and also the main image in the centre. The sentiment is also from one of the larger JOFY stamp sets which I stamped onto white card and fussy cut, dividing the words into two rows to better fit my overall design. I attached the sentiment using foam pads to give it some dimension.

That's it, a simple design where the images have 'centre stage' and the colour combination creates the design. Hope you like it and thanks for popping by to check out today's project.

Friday, 10 May 2013

Happy Friday folks, hope you're having a good one. Yesterday was the birthday of one of my lovely crafting pals and here's the card I made for her.

For my design I used these fabulous words which were a digi freebie I downloaded from a great blog - check it out here. Rebecca posts lots of freebies and asks only that anyone using them includes a link to her blog for anyone to download and not share the digis with anyone else. If you are into Scrapbooking or Smashbooking, there are some fantastic designs available on her blog as well as for cardmaking. The newest artwork on the blog also includes a Silhouette cutting file for those lucky enough to have one of those fabby machines.

I cut out each word by hand, leaving a white border, and attached them to the base card using foam pads. The sentiment is from a set of stamps by Inkadinkado - one that I turn to quite often in fact - stamped using SU! Midnight Muse ink.

That's it, nice and simple but I was really pleased with the finished card. Hope you had a wonderful Birthday yesterday Lauren, I'm sure I'll be hearing all about it very soon !

Thanks for popping by to check out my project today, hope you enjoyed your visit.

Thursday, 9 May 2013

Good Morning folks, it's Thursday again (how quick are the weeks flying by this year eh?) and we have a new challenge starting today over on the Cute Card Thursday Blog. This week the theme is 'Something Blue' and our prize sponsor is Whiff of Joy Stamps.

For my DT project this week I decided to create some little bags which hold just two Ferrero Rocher chocolates rather than a card. These make great little gifts for all sorts of occasions.

Here's a pic showing one of the bags opened to illustrate how the choccies fit in.

Each one is made from an A5 size piece of heavyweight paper or lightweight cardstock. For the one on the left I used a sheet from the DCWV Nanna's Kitchen pack and used a sheet of blue cardstock from SU! for the one on the right.

I stamped one of my lovely new JOFY stamps from Paper Artsy on the plain bag, used Memory Box dies to cut out leaves and flower and a Marianne's die to cut the curly sprays. The cute little sentiment images were stamped using a couple of stamps from a SU! set and cut out with the matching punch.

Finally I punched holes in the top using my Crop-a-dile and threaded ribbons through to hold the bags closed. I added a large gem to the centre of the flower just to give it a little bling.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing my DT project today, do hop over to the CCT blog to check out what the rest of the DT have been creating.

Wednesday, 8 May 2013

I'm soooo... late posting on here today, been busy busy busy - lots to do and very little time to get it all done !

With all the travelling and being away from home and my stash that I've done recently, Mr Mojo has been hiding away from me. I knew I had to get some cards made to meet deadlines, but no ideas were popping into my head. However, I just knew that my new Paper Artsy JOFY stamps (acquired during my visit to Birds in the Barn last week) would kick-start my creative juices and they've worked a treat !

I haven't entered many of the Simply Less is More challenges for quite a while, but their colour challenge this week really fired my imagination. So, here's my entry for their latest challenge

The LIM challenge asks us to use colours on the opposite side of the colour wheel - I've chosen the Violet/Yellow combo for my design.

I created the background of the image layer using Mustard Seed Distress Ink - applied using Inkyliscious brushes and my blending mat. I then stamped one of my scrumptious new JOFY stamps onto the background using Seedless Preserves DI. Using my Copic pens I added more colour to the flower to give it emphasis against the background. I then layered it over a piece of matching cardstock.

The sentiment is another stamp from my fav Inkadinkado sentiments set, which I stamped using Versafine ink.

Saturday, 4 May 2013

Happy Bank Holiday Saturday Folks, I hope you have as much sunshine wherever you are as I have here in sunny and warm Essex. I'm away from home for a few days, visiting my Son en route to taking my Dad home on Monday.

As I'm away from my stash, I don't have any new projects to share with you today, but I've a few pix to share.

Being in Essex for a few days has given me an opportunity to meet up with my lovely crafting pal Lauren. As we live so far apart, we don't get to spend a lot of time together but when we do we have a ball ! We decided to visit the Birds in the Barn craft shop in Marks Tey on Friday, which has a great selection of crafting goodies and is located in a garden centre with a lovely restaurant. It was so pleasant sitting outside in the warm fresh air to eat our yummy lunch - a delish chicken and bacon sarnie which Lauren and I shared, followed by a fabulous cheese scone and Dad enjoyed a prawn sarnie.

Lauren, Dad and I were tempted into new stash acquisition amazingly - I was fairly restrained, that is until I saw they had all the fabby Jofy range of stamps by Paper Artsy LOL I've been able to resist the temptation to get some of these for quite a while, but after seeing them IRL and holding them in my hand, all was lost and they jumped right into my basket! I'm going to so enjoy using these babies when I get back home, I can tell you.

I guess you all know me well by now and realise I'm unable to manage a day without some sort of crafting activity, this trip is no exception. I've brought along with me two sewing projects to work on. First one is a baby quilt I'm making for a pal's daughter - who doesn't want to know the sex of the baby in advance, so I've used fabrics which will be fine for a boy or a girl. It's in the final stages now as I just have to complete hand sewing the binding around the edges.

The other project WiP I brought with me is my hand sewn hexagon quilt. I've already cut what I believe is a sufficient number of fabric hexagons and paper templates using my Big Shot and Sizzix dies and I'm hand sewing them whenever I have a spare moment. Here are a few ready to be joined up into blocks and a small pile cut ready to be tacked to the paper templates.

Finally, here's a pic of an unusual 'visitor' we found on our driveway at home the day before we left.

I'm guessing it must have been someone's 'pet' and it either escaped or they let it out as it was no longer wanted. We decided not to touch it as it was making it's way slowly towards an area full of shrubs and off the drive. I'm not sure it will survive though as I believe they need a fairly warm environment and I'm pretty sure they are not indigenous to the UK (please correct me if I'm wrong about this).

Thanks for visiting today, sorry there were no new projects but as soon as I'm reunited with my stash I'll be creating once again and will share with you. Meantime, have a great Bank Holiday weekend.﻿

Thursday, 2 May 2013

It's thursday again folks so we have a new challenge launching on the Cute Card Thursday Blog today. This week our theme is 'Come Fly With Me' and our prize sponsor is Bunny Zoe Crafts.

For my DT card my take on the theme was to use this sweet owl stamp from Stampin'Up! It's one of my fav SU! stamps.

I stamped the image three times in a row (lining up 'by eye') using the lush SU! Midnight Muse ink. The sentiment stamp is also from SU! as is the tiny crown which I stamped in Baja Breeze ink before cutting out and attaching onto the centre owl's head. I've matted the stamped layers over Midnight Muse cardstock and the strip of bp was a scrap I found in the drawer.

Finally I added small touches of Stardust Stickles on the crown, the owls' beaks and a few dots on the sentiment.

Do pop over to the CCT blog to check out the awesome creations from the rest of the DT for great inspiration.

Thanks for visiting today, hope my card has inspired you just a little.

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All projects published on my blog are copyright to me - I am happy to share my designs here in the hope that they may inspire you to develop your own ideas. However please respect my right not to have my designs copied or "lifted" or entered for publication, competitions, etc. Direct copying of any design shown on this blog is an infringement of copyright.